Carl Maria Splett

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Memorial plaque in the Cathedral of Oliva

Carl Maria Splett (born January 17, 1898 in Sopot ; † March 5, 1964 in Düsseldorf ) was Bishop of Danzig from 1938 to 1964 and administrator of the Kulm diocese from December 1939 until the end of the war . His behavior towards the Polish population was controversial among Germans and Poles after the Second World War and up to the present day.

Education and career

Splett's father, Franz Splett, was the principal of a Catholic elementary school and a member of the Danzig Center Party. From 1920 until his accidental death in 1926 he held the office of Vice President of the People's Day of the Free City of Danzig .

Carl Maria Splett attended various church high schools and passed his Abitur in 1917. After leaving school, he studied theology and philosophy at the seminary of the Kulm diocese in Pelplin . During the semester break he learned Polish while doing temporary jobs in various parishes. Following his ordination in July 1921, Bishop Augustinus Rosentreter sent him to Rome for further studies, where he received his doctorate in canon law in 1923.

After an internship at the Rota , he returned to Danzig in 1924 , where a separate apostolic administration had been set up for the newly created Free State . Splett worked as a vicar in various parishes. He was soon entrusted with tasks in the diocesan administration by Bishop Eduard O'Rourke . In addition, from 1935 he was in charge of the cathedral parish in Danzig-Oliva as a parish administrator.

Splett was a member of the Catholic student associations KDSt.V. Burgundia (Leipzig) Düsseldorf , KDStV Hercynia Freiburg and KDStV Baltia (Danzig) to Aachen in the CV . He was also since 1957 honorary member of the KStV Pruthenia-Danzig in Aachen in the KV .

Splett as bishop

After the resignation of Bishop O'Rourke in 1938, the Holy See wanted to elevate Franz Sawicki to bishop. This failed due to the resistance of the National Socialist government of the Free State. The Warsaw Nuncio Filippo Cortesi became aware of Splett during the difficult negotiations and proposed him as the future Bishop of Danzig in June 1938. One year before the outbreak of World War II, Splett was ordained a bishop on August 24, 1938. Right from the start, the new bishop had to deal with the attacks by the National Socialists on the rights of the Church, which primarily wanted to close church schools and paralyze Catholic club life and pastoral care outside the church. The Polish minority, who made up 10 percent of Catholics, faced particular difficulties. By arresting some priests, the National Socialists put the bishop under pressure. Nevertheless he tried to neutralize the measures of the political rulers. Until 1939, therefore, church services with Polish sermons and folk songs could still be held in individual churches. He continued to build up the organization of the Danzig diocese, which had not yet been completed, and declared the consistory to be the cathedral chapter .

When war broke out, the Gestapo arrested all Polish and some German priests in his diocese, most of whom were killed. All Polish churches were closed and the Polish language was banned. In the neighboring bishopric of Kulm, pastoral care had almost collapsed after around two thirds of the diocesan clergy had been arrested and the rest had gone into hiding. The German occupying power had closed the churches and confiscated all church property. The members of the Kulm cathedral chapter had all been murdered, the bishop himself had been able to flee. Pope Pius XII then appointed Splett provisionally in December 1939 as Apostolic Administrator of the diocese.

Despite blackmail measures by the Gestapo (threats of murdering some Danzig priests), he tried his best to provide pastoral care in the Kulm diocese with priests from German dioceses. He succeeded in doing this relatively well, so that West Prussia was relatively well equipped in pastoral terms - compared to the rest of occupied Poland - during the war. Splett publicly condemned the murder of the SS Heimwehr Danzig , a troop made up of Danziger and West Prussian ethnic Germans.

Under pressure from the German authorities, Bishop Splett had to forbid confession in Polish in a pastoral letter in 1940 . The Nazis didn't even allow him to point out that this was an official request. Because of this measure, after the war, Splett was seen by many Poles as a henchman of the Nazis. Added to this was the high toll in blood that the Polish clergy had to pay. Although Splett had successfully campaigned for priests threatened with death in individual cases, overall he had hardly any means to stop the Nazis who systematically murdered the Polish intelligentsia and thus the clergy . Many Poles have overestimated the modest possibilities of the Bishop of Danzig and interpreted his helplessness as hostility towards Poland.

Bishop Splett did not flee Gdansk in 1945 and when the city was occupied in March he was imprisoned by the Soviets for a few weeks. Released in June, he was able to start reorganizing pastoral care in the completely destroyed Gdansk, working with both the remaining German and the newly arrived Polish priests. At the end of August 1945 he was arrested again by the Polish militia and at the same time the Polish primate Cardinal August Hlond declared him to be deposed on September 1st because he exceeded his powers. (Only the Pope has this right.) Splett did not accept Hlond's measure.

St. Lambertus , final resting place of Carl Maria Splett, Bishop of Danzig (1938–1964)

Imprisonment and exile

In a show trial initiated by the Polish Communists in early 1946, Splett was sentenced to eight years in prison for harming and Germanizing the Polish people. On the completion of the punishment in Wronki in Poznan that followed internment Spletts in a monastery, first in Borek Stary in Rzeszow , then in Dukla in the Beskidy Mountains . After the domestic political reorientation under Poland's party leader Władysław Gomułka , Splett was released at the request of Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński at the end of 1956 and deported to Germany. In 1957 he visited Pope Pius XII. in Rome, who gave him the title of Danzig bishop and commissioned Splett with the pastoral care of the expelled Danzig Catholics in the Federal Republic. Splett campaigned for the reconciliation of the two neighbors Poland and Germany. During the Second Vatican Council he met several times with Polish bishops. In 1964 he died unexpectedly in Düsseldorf .

literature

  • Jan Sikora: Biskup Carl Maria Splett . Warsaw 1951.
  • Richard Stachnik: The Catholic Church in Danzig . Münster 1959, pp. 143–152.
  • Franz Josef Wothe : The churches of the diocese of Danzig. Festival ceremony for Bishop Dr. Carl Maria Splett . Hildesheim 1963.
  • Franz Josef Wothe: Carl Maria Splett Bishop of Danzig. Life and documents . Hildesheim 1965.
  • Manfred Clauss: The Danzig Bishop Carl Maria Splett as Apostolic Administrator of the Diocese of Kulm . In: Zeitschrift für die Geschichte und Altertumskunde Ermlands 39 (1978), pp. 129–144.
  • Hans-Jürgen Karp : Germanization or Pastoral Care? In: ZfO 30 (1981), pp. 45-57.
  • Peter Raina: Carl Maria Splett . Warsaw 1994.
  • Stanisław Bogdanowicz: Karl Maria Splett. Biskup gdańskí czasu wojny, więzìeń specjalny PRL . Gdansk 1995.
  • Stefan Samerski :  Splett, Carl Maria. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 24, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-428-11205-0 , p. 729 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Stefan Samerski:  Splett, Carl Maria. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 10, Bautz, Herzberg 1995, ISBN 3-88309-062-X , Sp. 1043-1046.  ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive )
  • Ulrich Bräuel and Stefan Samerski (eds.): A bishop in court. The trial of Carl Maria Splett, Bishop of Danzig, in 1946 . Osnabrück 2005. ISBN 3-929759-98-5
  • Gerhard Erb: Carl Maria Splett. Bishop of Danzig in difficult times . Wilczek Düsseldorf 2006. ISBN 3-00-019324-3

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Siegfried Koß, Wolfgang Löhr (Hrsg.): Biographisches Lexikon des KV. 7th part (= Revocatio historiae. Volume 9). Akadpress, Essen 2010, ISBN 978-3-939413-12-7 , p. 145.

Web links

predecessor Office successor
Eduard Count O'Rourke Bishop of Danzig
1938–1964 		Edmund Nowicki
de facto already Andrzej Wronka , administrator, from 1945
personal data
SURNAME Splett, Carl Maria
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Bishop of Gdansk, administrator of the Polish diocese of Kulm
DATE OF BIRTH January 17, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Sopot
DATE OF DEATH March 5, 1964
Place of death Dusseldorf